The Narrowboat Girl

by Annie Murray

The woman stared at her, bewildered. ‘Who?’

  ‘Maryann – Flo Griffin’s daughter. Tony and Billy’s sister.’

  Mrs Martin’s mouth sagged open. ‘No!’ she exclaimed eventually. ‘Little Maryann? Ooh – I can see now, them blue eyes. Ooh my word!’

  ‘I’ve been working down south and I’ve come back for a visit, only I just wondered – you know, ’ow things are . . .’ She jerked her head over in the direction of the house.

  ‘Oh no – you won’t find ’em over there. Daint yer know?’ Her brow furrowed at Maryann’s extraordinary ignorance of her own family. ‘Your mother went to live back over in Sheepcote Lane when ’e left ’er. Couldn’t pay the rent no more, could ’er? In a right state ’er was. But that were a good while back – five year or more. We don’t see ’er round ’ere no more. Daint you know, bab?’

  Maryann shook her head, her pulse racing. ‘You mean Mr Griffin ain’t living with them no more?’

  ‘Ooh no – ’e took off after ’is premises went up. There was a fire, like. Gutted the ’ole damn place. You must remember that, daint yer? They’ve only just got it put back up now and Steven’s the drapers’re setting up. But your mother, Flo – well ’er version of events was ’e was never the same again after it and ’e took off and left ’er. Oh, Flo was in a right state I can tell yer.’

  Maryann could tell from the way Mrs Martin was squinting at her with her head a bit to one side that any moment she was going to start interrogating her. She backed away towards the door, almost falling over a pile of galvanized buckets.

  ‘So you say Mom’s gone to Sheepcote Lane?’

  ‘Sheepcote. Ar, that’s it, bab.’

  Maryann pulled the door open again. Ting!

  ‘You’re a right grown-up wench now, ain’t yer?’

  Maryann smiled. ‘Ta very much, Mrs Martin.’

  She passed the old house, peering closely at it. There were pale lilac curtains inside the lower window, and a black dog was lying asleep beside the step. She could sense it had all changed, would look very different inside from how she remembered, yet the thought of walking in through the front door made her flesh creep. Too many memories. Too many ghosts of the tormented little girls she and Sal had been in that house. She held on to the thought of Joel, to the love she had seen in his eyes which made her strong. Knowing she had Joel again she could face anything. Much better to keep walking and see what the present held than to linger here dwelling on the past.

  The only way she could think of finding her mom in Sheepcote Lane was to ask, yard by yard, even house by house down the poor end. Poverty would have driven her to a smaller house – what fierce resentment that must’ve bred in her! But maybe, when Norman left her, she had been able to see him as he really was: a conman who had married her for his own vile motives: for the fact that she had two young daughters and would look after him in comfort in exchange for his money. God knows, she thought, he wasn’t rich – not really. It was just that Mom was desperate. Maybe at last she’d be able to face the truth.

  She did not need to look far. In the second back court she went into she was confronted by the sight of a woman, her back to Maryann. Her legs were thin and stringy, and her hair which had once been thick and blonde was now faded to grey, twisted and pinned up savagely behind her head. She was reaching up to unpeg a sheet from a crowded line of washing which billowed in the damp air. Maryann knew her immediately. She felt a surge of pity. Flo’s bitterness and exhaustion was clear in every movement she made. Even during the war she had been quite a voluptuous woman, but now she was very thin. She kept reaching up to the line, unpegging and yanking sheets, bloomers, an apron down from it, shaking them angrily when the breeze tried to force them the wrong way. Maryann hadn’t the courage to go to her in the yard. She hovered in the entry until Flo had picked up her enormous basket of washing and struggled into the end house.

  It was about five o’clock. Her mom’d be cooking soon. Best go over there and get it over with. She was just stepping out across the narrow yard when two boys ran out laughing from another house. They were both about ten years old, one dark, one blond. Seeing the fairer of the two, Maryann stopped. Something about him, the way he moved, his colouring told her immediately that this was Billy. He and the other boy were tearing up and down the yard chasing one another and laughing. They saw her looking and took no notice. Both of them were in shorts cut down from longer trousers and grubby shirts hanging loose at the back. As they came closer, Maryann called, ‘Billy?’

  He slowed, peering at her, and came closer. His face was grubby and red from running and she saw he had a trail of freckles across his nose. From the big blue eyes, the way he held his head, she knew that he was her brother.

  ‘Billy – it’s me, Maryann. I’m your big sister.’ Tears came as she said it. All those years of his life she’d missed. A little, soft thing he’d been when she left, who’d sit on her lap for a love and let her bath him. Now he was a long, skinny lad, almost grown up!

  ‘Are yer?’ She could see him searching his memory. Surely he’d been old enough when she left for him to remember her? But then she’d changed too. A sad look came over his face for a second, and she thought he was going to say something else. But then he seemed to remember the other boy with him and he wasn’t going to go all soft in front of him. ‘Our mom’s indoors,’ he said with a toss of his head. ‘See yer.’ And the two of them careered off again.

  Gripping the handle of her case, Maryann walked along the yard. If it had been a house she’d ever lived in herself, she’d have just walked in but here she felt she must knock. She saw one of the front panes was broken and covered with cardboard, and the green paint on the door was flaking and dirty. She rapped it with her knuckles.

  ‘Oo is it?’ Even her mother’s voice sounded different, thinner, somehow cracked.

  Maryann pushed the door open. It was gloomy inside and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. She immediately recognized the table and chairs which stood to one side of the little room as the ones they had had in the last house, bought by Norman Griffin after they left Garrett Street. Her mother was standing between the table and the range, gutting herrings which were stinking the place out. She had looked up without stopping what she was doing until she saw Maryann. Flo straightened up, holding out blood-smeared hands in front of her.

  ‘’Ello, Mom.’

  The expression on Flo’s face, already harsh and unsmiling, grew more taut. Maryann was shocked by just how much she had changed, as if in six years she had fallen into old age. Her face was pallid, almost yellow, the skin had lost its elasticity so that it sagged over her cheekbones. She looked hard and shrewish.

  ‘Is that you, Maryann?’

  Maryann nodded. ‘I’ve been in service. Not in Brum.’ Even now she couldn’t bring herself to give away where she’d been.

  Flo became suddenly aware of the mess her hands were in and picked up a damp rag from the table to wipe them. There was an ominous silence as she did it and Maryann could tell she was gathering her thoughts.

  ‘Where’s Mr Griffin?’

  Flo slapped the rag back down on the table before walking round and advancing on Maryann, staring at her with her eyes full of loathing.

  ‘Where’s Mr Griffin?’ she mimicked. For a few seconds she couldn’t seem to find any more words. Maryann shrank back as her mother came right up close.

  ‘Mom! What’re yer doing!’

  ‘You did it, daint yer? You set that fire at Griffin’s before yer buggered off. Norman knew it was you, you evil little bitch. You destroyed my life, d’yer know that? D’you even care what yer did? You ought to be banged up in Winson Green, that’s where. You ruined everything we ’ad. He walked out and left and I ’ad nowt and two boys to bring up. I’ve been slaving in factories ever since, thanks to you. And d’you know why ’e left? ’Cause ’e said ’e weren’t staying in a family of bloody lunatics who’d taken away his livelihood. And it was all your fault, Maryann.’ The words ra
ined down, sharp and hateful. ‘You ruined your own family – so ’ow d’you feel about that, eh?’

  Maryann thought Flo was going to go for her throat with her fishy hands and she twisted away from her and backed across the room. She had such strong emotion rising in her she felt she might burst. The injustice of everything her mother thought and felt, the way she’d never listen or see the truth – never had. She’d never taken their side, hers and Sal’s. She was beyond tears: her feelings were too raw and harsh.

  ‘You’re a sad, blind woman, ain’t yer, Mother?’ She stood clutching the back of one of the chairs as if to contain the violence that raged inside her. Her voice was low and trembling with emotion. ‘Yes – I set fire to Norman Griffin’s offices and I ’oped they’d burn to the ground so there was nothing left for him. But that ain’t why he left you and you know it. ’E left because we’d gone, me and Sal, and there was nothing left for him that he wanted. ’Cause ’e didn’t like grown-up women, did he? He liked little girls he could bully and do his dirty business with and turn them into . . . rag dolls, with no feelings or life left of their own.’ She in turn advanced on her mother. ‘D’yer know what it was he did to our Sal so she lost ’er mind and he’d’ve done to me too if ’e’d ’ad the chance? D’yer want to know what I found in the cellar of those offices the night I went down there? Do yer?’ She was shouting at the top of her voice, distraught.

  ‘No, no, shut up, you lying, wicked girl . . .’ Flo laid her arm across her face as if to protect herself.

  ‘No – you don’t want to hear that anything might be your fault, your greed, putting money and dresses and your comfort over and above your children.’ Now she’d begun to open the floodgates she couldn’t stop. She was growing hysterical. ‘You don’t want to hear about Norman, the oh-so respectable Mr Griffin chaining our Sal to a chair and doing God knows what to ’er and most likely promising to leave her down there with a corpse for company all night. Because that’s something that wouldn’t be my fault or Sal’s, would it? You’d have to face that you didn’t see and you wouldn’t see because all you could think of was saving your own skin. You daint see her stabbing at her own arms with a knife because she couldn’t live with herself. And it weren’t you that found her with her wrists slit open, was it? You never even went to look at her after . . . Was the mess too much for you, Mother? Too real for you that, was it?’

  She couldn’t go on. She bent over the chair with her hands over her face as sobs choked her, the long-buried grief welling up from deep inside her. After a few moments she glanced up to see her mother looking at her with a terrible, twisted expression on her face.

  ‘Get out of my ’ouse.’ Her voice lashed across the room. ‘You’ve done enough damage to us. We’ve lived without yer all these years. We don’t need you back ’ere now. Tek yerself and yer poison away from ’ere. I don’t want yer coming ’ere again.’

  Maryann wiped her eyes, chilled by the hateful finality of her mother’s words. ‘I want to see my brothers.’

  ‘You ain’t seeing no one. Get out!’ Flo shouted. ‘Get out now and don’t ever come back. Never!’

  Thirty-Four

  Maryann walked back out of the yard in Sheepcote Lane so blinded by tears that she could barely see where she was going. Her mother’s rejection of her was so total, so final it had cut her to the bone. They had never been close as mother and daughter but she had hoped that somehow, after all that had happened and with Norman Griffin gone, there could have been a reconcilation. Now she had lost that hope for ever.

  If only Nanny Firkin was still ’ere, Maryann thought. I could’ve gone to her – she was proper family. She’d’ve been glad to see me and it would’ve felt like home. The thought of this made her cry even more.

  As it was, the only person she could hope to turn to now was Nance. She found her feet turning almost automatically to the familiar territory of Garrett Street. Somehow she didn’t doubt that the Blacks would be living in the same place. Before she went into the yard she tried to compose herself and dried her eyes. She was pleased at the thought of seeing them and even smiled slightly as a familiar sight met her eyes in the old yard: Blackie Black’s ‘fuckin’ barrer’ leaning as drunkenly as she had frequently seen its owner do, against the wall of the brewhouse.

  The Blacks’ door was open and Maryann peeped her head round. The family was at the table having tea. Cathleen’s squiffy eyes, Blackie’s bloodshot ones and those of the six children round the table all peered at her.

  ‘Oo’re yer looking for, wench?’ Cathleen said. – ‘Eh, ’ang on a minute, I know you, don’t I? It’s . . . It can’t be Maryann?’ She pushed back her chair and stood up.

  ‘It is,’ Maryann said shyly.

  ‘’Eh, Blackie, it’s little Maryann, our Nance’s pal!’ Blackie squinted at her but there was a vacant look in his eyes. He made a sound between a grunt and a whine.

  ‘Come on in, bab!’ Cathleen came and stood gazing at her. ‘Don’t mind Blackie – ’e ain’t none too well these days. Well – look at you! Our Nance’ll be ever so pleased to see yer. You ain’t been round to see ’er, ’ave you?’

  ‘No – I’ve only just got ’ere.’ Maryann put her case down gratefully, trying to keep the tears from welling up yet again. It meant so much to be greeted kindly by people who were pleased to see her.

  ‘’Ere – ’ave a cuppa tea – it’s just brewed. You seen yer mom?’

  Maryann nodded.

  ‘Well – what’d ’er say?’ Cathleen was stirring the teapot vigorously.

  ‘She daint offer me a cuppa tea, I’ll tell yer that much.’

  ‘Ooh dear – like that, was it?’

  Maryann nodded, conscious that the family were all staring at her. Good heavens, – that oldest one was Perce – he was eighteen now! And young Horace who’d still been sucking his thumb and peeing his pants was a lad of nine now! There was Lizzie who’d only been a babby. And who was that? There was another little girl sitting at the table between William and George, who were now also a good deal more grown up.

  ‘You ’ad another daughter then?’ Maryann smiled at the child.

  ‘Ar – that’s our Mary,’ Cathleen said. ‘She were the last. Four year ago that were. I ’ad to ’ave all my – you know – taken away after. It were a blessing really, God forgive me, but I’ve ’ad my ten and that were enough for anyone.’ She watched anxiously as Blackie pulled himself up from the table and lurched over to his old chair with the fag burns and settled into it with a loud groan. She leaned forward shaking her head and whispered, ‘’E ain’t ’imself.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Maryann whispered back.

  ‘Oh, they don’t really know. They think ’e might ’ave ’ad a bit of a turn. ’E can ’ardly speak. Not that ’e was a great talker before. I dunno.’ She sighed, looking across at him worriedly. Maryann felt sorry for her, poor, worn-out woman. Cathleen and Blackie had both aged considerably.

  ‘Any’ow, enough of our problems – where’ve yer been, Maryann?’

  She told them a bit about Charnwood, then asked after the rest of the family.

  ‘Where’s Nance – and Charlie?’

  ‘Oh, our Charlie’s been wed a good while now – three kiddies they’ve got. All girls, would yer believe it! Alf and Jimmy’ve got one apiece. Alf was wed two year ago and Jimmy last year. They’re all good wenches they’ve found themselves, all Catholics ’cept Jimmy’s wife Lena, but she ain’t no trouble.

  ‘And our Nance married Mick just a few months back – in the spring. She ’ad ’er nuptial mass in April. It were lovely, weren’t it?’

  ‘Me and Mary was bridesmaids,’ Lizzie chipped in.

  She reminded Maryann a little bit of Nancy when she was younger, with her head of black curls, although she had a softer, more feminine look about her.

  ‘Nance’d’ve asked yer to the wedding only she daint know where yer were,’ Cathleen said. ’Er missed yer, yer know, after yer went.’

  ‘I know,’
Maryann said. ‘I missed ’er too. But I ’ad to get away.’

  Cathleen nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Where’s Nance living? And what’s ’er name now she’s married?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Mallone. Mick Mallone’s ’er ’usband. They only live over the back in Alexander Street. Yer can pop round and see ’er when yer’ve ’ad yer tea.’

  ‘Any babbies on the way yet?’ Maryann said smiling.

  Cathleen shook her head. ‘No – but they’ve only been wed a few month. It’ll give ’er time to settle.’ But Maryann thought she seemed rather lacking in warmth on the subject of Nance’s marriage, however nice the wedding had been. She glanced at Blackie and saw that he appeared to have fallen asleep, his head lolling down on his chest.

  ‘’Ere – if you’re going round to see our Nance, take the girls with yer and get ’em out of my hair for a bit, will yer? They like going round there.’

  Nance was living in a front house which opened on to the street. The door was open and the two girls ran straight in.

  ‘We’ve got Maryann!’ she heard Lizzie shouting excitedly.

  Immediately, as Maryann reached the house, Nance’s face appeared at the open door, looking out with a combination of wariness and disbelief. For a second Maryann was shocked by Nance’s thinness and the dull sullenness of her expression under her mop of black curls, until she registered that it really was Maryann and burst into delighted laughter.

  ‘Oh my God – well I never! It really is – Maryann!’

  Laughing and tearful at the same time, the two of them flung their arms round each other.

  ‘Why didn’t yer tell me where you was living?’ Nance reproached her. ‘I wouldn’t’ve let on to anyone and I couldn’t drop yer a line back or invite yer to the wedding or nothing! ’Ere – come in. It ain’t much but we’ve got it to ourselves.’ She drew Maryann inside and shut the door. ‘Let me get that kettle on – or d’yer want a nip of summat stronger, eh?’

  ‘No – tea’d be nice, Nance.’